Source: https://tolstoy-lit.ru/tolstoy/bio/biryukov/biografiya-biryukov-3-18.htm
Text: P. I. Biryukov (1860–1931), Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Volume III. Public domain.
Translation: English translation for the tolstoy.life research platform (2026-05-26), from the continuous Russian capture in ../ru/chapter-18.md.
Part IV. 1896–1899. The Doukhobors. Resurrection
L. N. spent the greater part of January at the estate of his old friend Count Olsufyev, Nikolskoye, whither he had driven with his daughter Tatyana Lvovna on 1 January by sledge from Moscow. The journey was so pleasant that L. N. wished it might go on. He writes to his wife: “Here we are, already a second day here, dear friend Sonya. We travelled so well that it was a pity to arrive.” And at the end of the letter he adds:
“I should very much like to write here something long since conceived; but evidently this is not in our power, and today I was further from the possibility of writing than ever.”
But afterwards, as it appears, his writing came right, and L. N., while staying with the Olsufyevs, finished the story Master and Man, begun long before, back at Begichevka; he sent it off, just before his departure from Olsufyev’s, to the editorial office of Severny Vestnik (The Northern Herald), where it was printed in the March number; we shall return to it again.
There too, at Nikolskoye, L. N. makes an interesting entry in his diary on 4 January:
“Service, trade, husbandry, even philanthropy — do not coincide with the work of life: the service of the Kingdom of God, that is, the furtherance of eternal progress.”
At the end of January L. N. returns to Moscow.
L. N.’s diary of this time is especially abundant in profound and significant thoughts. We shall give here several striking extracts. Here is how he defines the “madness of egoism.” This entry belongs to the beginning of February:
“Madness is egoism; or, conversely, egoism — that is, life for oneself alone, for one’s own personality — is madness.
(I should like to say that there is no other madness, but I do not know whether that is true.)
Man is so created that he cannot live alone, just as bees cannot live alone; there is implanted in him the need to serve others. If the need to serve is implanted in him, that is, is proper to him, then the need to be served — être servi — is also implanted in him and natural to him.
If a man should be deprived of the second — that is, of the need to make use of the services of others — he is mad: paralysis of the brain, melancholia; if he should be deprived of the first need — to serve others — he is mad with every most various sort of madness, of which the most characteristic is the mania of grandeur.
The greatest number of the mad are the mad of the second kind, those who have lost the need to serve others — the mad of egoism, as I said at the outset. Of this kind there is a vast number; the majority of worldly people are possessed by this madness. It does not strike our eye only because this madness is common to great masses, and the mad of this kind join together.
They suffer little from their madness, because they meet with no resistance to it but, on the contrary, with sympathy. And therefore all people possessed by this madness cling with frightful obstinacy to the beaten ruts, to outward traditions, to the conventions of society. This alone saves them from the terribly tormenting side of their egoistic madness.
As soon as such a man, for whatever reason, goes out from the company of people like himself, he at once becomes unhappy and, evidently, mad. All amassers of wealth, all the ambitious — civil and military — are such madmen. As soon as they are outside people such as themselves — outside the voies communes — they are fous à lier.”
As may be seen here, L. N. establishes the principle of the union of man, of the exchange of living services with the people around him, of the impossibility of separating from them. It is interesting to set this thought beside an almost opposite one, recorded that same day, somewhat further on:
“Looking at what is done in all assemblies, at what is done in society with its conventional proprieties and amusements, there became strikingly clear to me a thought that, it seems, had never yet come to me — that by a heap, by a crowd, by an assembly only evil is done. Good is done only by each separate man apart.”
Of course there is no contradiction here. Man does good in solitude, at his own cost and on his own responsibility; but by this good he serves people and must be ready to accept the services of others. In this consist the healthy conditions of man’s social life.
This year was marked by especially vivid protests, by separate individuals and by whole groups, against state coercion in the form of the law-court, the army, the oath, and taxes, as incompatible with the Christian understanding of life. The greater part of the people who declared this protest were in communication with L. N., expressing their sympathy with him, and one may suppose that their acts bore upon them the influence of his views. It must be recalled that a year before, L. N.’s work The Kingdom of God Is Within You had begun to be circulated in Russia and abroad, and had undoubtedly acted powerfully upon the reader.
One of such protests was the refusal of military service by the Austro-Hungarian military physician Albert Škarvan, a friend and like-minded companion of Dušan Petrovich Makovický. It was from the latter that L. N. received the first news of Škarvan’s act.
And L. N. answered him thus on 10 February of that same year:
“I received your letter yesterday, dear Dušan Petrovich, and was greatly touched and struck by the news you communicate of the act of our common friend Škarvan. When I learn of acts of this kind, I always experience a very strong mixed feeling of fear, of triumph, of compassion, and of joy. In all matters of this kind it is inevitably one of two things: either it is a manifestation of the almighty God in man, and then it is triumph and joy and an undoubted victory, even though the man in whom God is manifested should be burned up; or it is the work of a human, personal impulse — love of glory, irritation, passion — and then this manifestation serves only as a source of suffering for him who manifests it, and not only does not serve, but merely harms, the work of God. The sign that it is the work of God and not of man is this: that, in performing it, the man does not do what he wishes, but what he cannot help doing.
I hope and believe that our dear Škarvan acted as he did — that is, could not act otherwise — and then the work of God is wrought through him, and whatever they may do to him, he will not suffer, but will rejoice together with us. Write, please, all that you know about him. Can we not be of some service to him? Convey to him my love.
Evidently among your clergy too there is a terrible dishonesty and a setting of human, state interests before those of God. Striking is the clergy’s fear of the truth, a part of which has shown itself in the teaching of the Nazarenes, and their consciousness of their own impotence. To persecute is impossible — it is shameful, one must be liberal; yet the interpretation of the teaching only exposes the truth of the Nazarenes and the falsehood of the churches. What, then, is to be done? One must dodge and shuffle. And this is what they do, striving to maintain their position at least for a time, for their own lifetime.”
But side by side with these events that joyfully stirred L. N.’s soul, he had also to bear a heavy trial in his own family life.
At the end of February his youngest son, Vanechka, fell ill with scarlet fever, and on the 23rd, at eleven o’clock at night, having been ill for several days, he died.
It fell to me to be in the Tolstoys’ house during those heavy days, and to observe the grave struggle that L. N. waged between inconsolable grief and religious submission to the higher will. The degree of this grief is easy to understand from the words L. N. spoke to Sofya Andreyevna after the death of this child, so dearly loved by all: “And I had dreamed that Vanechka would carry on the work of God after me! What is to be done!” These words were spoken with scarcely restrained tears and sobs.
I remember how, after the customary funeral rite had been performed, just before the little body was carried out of the Khamovniki house, L. N. and I somehow found ourselves alone together beside the little coffin — already closed, but not yet nailed down — while all the other members of the family had gone to make ready for the journey to the cemetery. L. N. went up to the coffin, lifted the lid one last time, looked at the waxen, dear little face, glanced at me as though seeking sympathy, and, sobbing, said: “What a pretty little face,” and down his aged, worn face the tears flowed in a stream. He closed the lid and went out of the room.
In many letters and in diary entries of that time we find a description of the feelings and thoughts that this — one would like to say, untimely — death called forth in L. N. and in the close people around him. But do we know the time when a man’s earthly life ought to end?
The first letter about this, on the day after Vanechka’s death, L. N. wrote to Chertkov; here it is:
“We have a heavy trial, dear friend. Vanechka fell ill with scarlet fever and two days later, yesterday evening, on the 23rd, died. My wife suffers grievously, but, thank God, bears all this terrible grief religiously. Her whole life had been in him; he was the last, and was a boy exceptional in his spiritual qualities. So far all is well; I pray God to help me to act in these solemn moments as He wills. Death draws one wonderfully near to Him — and He is love. I long to call forth in you both, and to feel, that which is divine in you, that is, love.”
And in the next letter he writes again of this grief:
“At moments I feel sorry that this dear being is no longer here with us; but I check this feeling and am able to do so (I know that my wife cannot); yet my fundamental, chief feeling is gratitude for what was and is, and a reverent awe before that which has drawn near and been made clear by this death.
My wife, as I wrote to you, bears it heavily, but very well. Especially in the first days I was dazzled by the beauty of her soul, opened up in consequence of this rupture. In the first days she could not endure any expression of unlove — of anyone toward anyone. I once said in her presence, of a person who had written me a tactless letter of condolence: what a stupid man. I saw that this cut her painfully to the heart, and so it was in other cases too. But at times this light begins slightly to be obscured, and I am terribly afraid of this. Yet, for all that, the life of this child, made manifest at his death, has produced upon her — and, I hope, upon me too — the most beneficial influence. Having seen the possibility of love, one no longer wishes to live without it.”
On 12 March he records in his diary:
“Vanechka’s death was for me, like Nikolenka’s death (no, in a far greater degree), a manifestation of God, a drawing toward Him. And therefore not only can I not say that it was a sad, grievous event, but I say outright that it was a joyful — ‘joyful’ is a bad word — but a merciful event, from God, one that unravels the falsehood of life and draws one near to Him.”
Here are a few more thoughts on death, recorded that same day and evidently called forth by the same event:
“One of two things: either death, hanging over us all, has power over us and can part us and deprive us of the good of love; or there is no death, but only a series of changes taking place in us all, among which one of the most significant is death — and these changes take place in us all, combining variously, some earlier, some later, like waves.
The death of children, from the ordinary point of view: nature tries giving the best, and, seeing that the world is not yet ready for them, takes them back. But try she must, in order to go forward. As swallows that arrive too early freeze. Yet still they must arrive. So with Vanechka.
But this is an objective, foolish reasoning. The reasonable reasoning is that he did the work of God — the establishment of the Kingdom of God through the increase of love — more than many who have lived half a century and more.
Yes, love is God.
A few days after Vanechka’s death, when love began to grow weak in me (that which God gave me through Vanechka’s life and death will never be destroyed), I thought that it is well to sustain love in oneself by seeing children in all people, by imagining them to oneself such as they were at seven years old.
I can do this. And it is good.”
Particularly remarkable is L. N.’s letter to his old friend, Countess Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstaya:
“Sonya began this letter the day before yesterday — she did not finish it, and yesterday she fell ill with influenza, and today she is still unwell and has asked me to finish it. And I am very glad of this, dear, beloved old friend. Sonya’s bodily illness is, it seems, neither dangerous nor severe; but her spiritual pain is very heavy, though, I think, not only not dangerous but beneficial and joyful — like a birth, like a birth into the spiritual life. Her grief is immense. From everything in life that was hard for her, unexplained, vaguely troubling, she had taken refuge in this love — a passionate and mutual love for a boy truly and especially gifted in spirit and in love. (He was one of those children whom God sends prematurely into a world not yet ready for them, one of the foremost, like the swallows that arrive too early and freeze.) And suddenly he was taken from her, and in worldly life, notwithstanding her motherhood, it was as though nothing was left to her. And she is involuntarily brought to the necessity of rising into another, spiritual world, in which she has not lived until now. And it is astonishing how her motherhood has preserved her pure and capable of receiving spiritual truths. She amazes me by her spiritual purity — by her humility especially. She is still seeking, but so sincerely, with her whole heart, that I am sure she will find. The good thing in her is that she is submissive to the will of God and asks only that He teach her how to live without the being into whom all the force of love had been put. And she does not yet know how. This loss is painful to me, but I feel it far less than Sonya does — first, because I had and have another life, a spiritual one; and second, because, on account of her grief, I do not see my own deprivation, and because I see that something great is being accomplished in her soul, and I am sorry for her, and her condition moves me. In general I can say that it is well with me.
These last days Sonya has been keeping the fast with the children and with Sasha, who prays, fasts, and reads the Gospel with a touching seriousness. She, poor child, was very painfully struck by this death. But I think it is well. Today she took communion, but Sonya could not, because she had fallen ill. Yesterday she made her confession to a very intelligent priest, Valentin (the friend and mentor of my sister Mashenka), who said well to Sonya that mothers who lose their children always, at first, turn to God, but afterwards return again to worldly cares and again withdraw from God, and he warned her against this. And it seems this will not happen to her.
How glad I am that your health has mended, or is mending. Perhaps God will yet grant us to meet. I greatly desire it.
How many times before have I asked myself, as many ask: why do children die? And I never found an answer. But of late, not thinking at all of children, but of my own life and of human life in general, I came to the conviction that the sole task of every man’s life lies only in this: to increase love in oneself and, increasing love in oneself, to infect others with it, increasing love in them too. And when now life itself has set the question: why did this boy live and die, not having lived out even a tenth part of an ordinary human life? — the answer common to all men, at which I had arrived without thinking at all of children, not only fitted this death, but, by the very thing that had befallen us all, confirmed the justice of that answer. He lived in order to increase love in himself, to grow in love, since this was needful to Him who sent him, and in order that, departing from life to Him who is love, he might leave all the love grown in him within us, and bind us together by it. Never have we all been so close to one another as now, and never, either in Sonya or in myself, have I felt such a need of love and such a loathing for all disunion and evil. Never have I loved Sonya as I do now. And from this it is well with me.”
Still later, in April, seeing the still-continuing sufferings of his wife over the loss of the child, L. N. records in his diary:
“A mother suffers over the loss of a child and cannot be comforted. And she cannot be comforted until she understands that her life is not in the vessel, which is broken, but in the contents, which have poured out, lost their form, but have not vanished.
(This was somehow new and clear when I wrote it down, but now it has lost its significance.)
All the wisdom of the world consists in transferring one’s life from form into content, and in directing one’s powers not to the preservation of the form, but to flowing.”
But life went on its course, putting forward new demands, screening the past with new events, however significant that past might have been.
In the March number of Severny Vestnik there appeared a new artistic work of L. N.’s, Master and Man. At the same time it came out also as a separate edition in Moscow, from Posrednik (“The Intermediary”) (in two forms, on good paper and on plain), and in Petersburg, from one of the publishers.
This appearance of a new artistic work by L. N. after a long interval of time, of course, produced a sensation in society. For many admirers, chiefly of L. N.’s artistic gift, it was a veritable festival. A certain lady told me that for a long while she could not rid herself of a peculiarly joyful feeling that accompanied all her thoughts and doings. Immersed in the ordinary worldly bustle, she felt every now and then that behind everything happening before her there lay hidden some festive event. And when she began to recall what there had been so festive, there arose before her Master and Man, the new artistic work of L. N.’s. She rejoiced in it, then forgot it again, and once more the insistent feeling led her to the recollection of this joyful event.
L. N. himself, as a true artist, was, as always, dissatisfied with his work and regarded it with good-natured irony. Here is what he recorded about it in his diary:
“Since I do not hear all the censures, but hear only the praises for Master and Man, it seems to me a great noise, and I recall the anecdote of the preacher who, at a burst of applause that drowned out one of his phrases, stopped and asked: ‘Or did I say some stupidity?’ I feel the same, and I know that I committed a stupidity in occupying myself with the artistic working-up of an empty story. The very idea is unclear and laboured, not simple.
The story is a poor one. And I should like to write an anonymous criticism of it, if I had the leisure, and if it were not a caring about something not worth the trouble.”
How varied L. N.’s interests in life were at this time is proved by his letter, given below, written at this same period — that is, at the end of March — to a new English friend of his, John Kenworthy, who had begun in England to spread L. N.’s ideas by word and deed. We shall return again to a description of his activity. At this same time he had published in England the two volumes of an English translation of L. N.’s work The Union and Translation of the Four Gospels, and had sent L. N. a copy of this edition, together with a work of his own entitled The Anatomy of Misery. In his reply L. N. thanks Kenworthy for what he had sent and expresses the following thoughts:
“Dear friend!
I have received your letter and the book and the pamphlet. The book is excellently translated and published. I have read it through again. There are in it many defects which I should not commit were I writing it now, but I can no longer correct it. Its chief defect is the excessive philological subtleties, which convince no one that such-and-such a word must be understood precisely thus and not otherwise, but, on the contrary, make it possible, by refuting particulars, to undermine confidence in the whole.
And yet the truth of the general sense is so unquestionable that whoever will not let himself be distracted by the details will inevitably agree with it.
Your pamphlet is excellent, especially the end. It is high time to tell the people the condition on which they attain their welfare. Looking at the suffering of the people, it is always frightening to lay yet more heavy demands upon them. Yet this is necessary, and you have done it admirably.
Now I will tell you of the project that has of late been occupying me. Of late I have received, from several quarters, offers of money, with the request that it be used for some work useful to people. Together with this, there accumulates with me more and more material — articles, books, pamphlets; Russian, German, English (astonishing, in this respect, is the lifelessness of the French) — of one and the same tendency and spirit, pointing to the impossibility of the continuation of the existing order of things and to the necessity of changing it: changing it not by the old means, which have proved ineffectual — the violent overthrow of the existing order, or attempts at its gradual change through participation in the existing government — but by the religious means of separate individuals, as is excellently expressed in your letter. I am not stating my own programme, but only expressing one unquestionable sign common to all those articles and books that I receive. Both these circumstances — the offer of money and the accumulation of books and articles of one and the same character, and often very powerful in thought and expression — prompt me to return to a thought that has long occupied me: to found in Europe, in a free state — in Switzerland, for example — an international, not a journal, but a publication under one and the same title, in one and the same form, of books and pamphlets in four languages — French, English, German, and Russian — in which there should be printed, in the cheapest possible way, all works that, first, make clear the true meaning of human life; second, point out the discrepancies of our life with this meaning; and third, the means of reconciling the one with the other. The general title for the whole series of publications might be given as ‘Regeneration’ or something of the kind. If you can send me a few more of your books, both of the first and of the latest pamphlets, send them to me.”
We have already mentioned that V. G. Chertkov, while living in England, partly realized this project; but the full realization of this grandiose design has not yet come about, and the project awaits its executor.
Amid his thoughts of an international educational activity, L. N. did not forget the constant, difficult labour of bringing his life into accord with his understanding of life. One of his long-standing cares was the freeing of his works from the rights of literary property.
As regards what he had written after 1881, he had already done this, having renounced his author’s rights in print and granted to all who wished the right to publish his works, as far back as 1892. But what he had written before 1881 he could not hand over to common use, since in carrying out this intention he met with strong resistance from his family. And so, in March 1895, he writes his first will, in which he addresses to his family the request to do this after his death. This whole document is exceedingly characteristic and vividly expresses L. N.’s modest firmness in the realization of his convictions. We give it here in full.
27 March 1895.
“My will would be approximately this (until I write another, it is fully this):
1) To bury me where I die, in the cheapest cemetery, if it be in a town, and in the cheapest coffin, as paupers are buried. To lay no flowers, no wreaths; to make no speeches. If possible, then without priests and without a funeral service. But if this be disagreeable to those who will bury me, then let them bury me as is usual, with a service, but as cheaply and as simply as possible.
2) Not to print news of my death in the newspapers, and to write no obituaries.
3) To give all my papers to be looked through and sorted by my wife, by Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov, by Strakhov, and by my daughters Tanya and Masha (what is blotted out, I blotted out myself; my daughters need not occupy themselves with this) — by those of these persons who shall be living. My sons I exclude from this charge, not because I did not love them (and, thank God, of late I have loved them more and more), and I know that they love me, but because they do not fully know my thoughts, have not followed their course, and may have their own particular views of things, in consequence of which they might preserve what need not be preserved, and discard what need be preserved. The diaries of my former bachelor life, after choosing from them what is worth it, I ask to be destroyed; likewise, in the diaries of my married life, I ask that all be destroyed whose publication might be disagreeable to anyone.
Chertkov promised me, while I am yet living, to do this. And, in view of his great love for me — undeserved by me — and his great moral sensitiveness, I am sure he will do it admirably. The diaries of my bachelor life I ask to be destroyed not because I should wish to hide from people my bad life — my life was the ordinary trashy life of unprincipled young men — but because these diaries, in which I recorded only what tormented me with the consciousness of sin, produce a falsely one-sided impression and present… But, however, let my diaries remain as they are. From them it is at least evident that, notwithstanding all the vulgarity and trashiness of my youth, I was nevertheless not forsaken by God, and that, at least in old age, I came, if only a little, to understand and to love Him.
All this I write not because I ascribe great or any importance to my papers, but because I know beforehand that for a time after my death people will print my works and discourse upon them and ascribe to them a certain importance. Since this has come to be so, then let my writings not serve to the harm of people.
Of the rest of my papers, I ask those who shall occupy themselves with sorting them to print not all, but only that which may really be useful to people.
4) The right of publishing my earlier works — the ten volumes and the ABC — I ask my heirs to hand over to the public, that is, to renounce the author’s right. But I only ask this; I in no way bequeath it. To do this would be well. It will be well for you also; if you do not do it — that is your affair — it means you are not ready to do it. That my works have been sold these last nine years has been for me the most painful thing in my life.
5) And, further and chiefly, I beg all, both near and far, not to praise me (I know that they will do it, because they did it during my life too, in the most unseemly way), but, if they will occupy themselves with my writings, then to enter into those passages of them in which, I know, the power of God spoke through me, and to make use of them for their own lives. There were times when I felt myself a conductor of the will of God. Often I was so impure, so full of personal passions, that the light of this truth was darkened by my darkness; but still, at times, this truth passed through me, and these were the happiest moments of my life. God grant that their passing through me has not defiled these truths, that people, notwithstanding the petty, impure character which they received from me, may yet be nourished by them. In this alone lies the significance of my writings. And therefore I may only be scolded for them, and in no way praised.
That is all. Lev Tolstoy.”
Lev Nikolaevich asks me to write here, further, that by Strakhov he meant Nikolai Nikolaevich, now deceased.
This will was printed for the first time in the Tolstoy Yearbook for 1912. L. N.’s eldest son, Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy, who gave the manuscript of this will to the Yearbook, accompanied the document with a note to the following effect:
“The extract from the diary of L. N. Tolstoy here printed is his first written testamentary disposition. The wishes expressed in this diary were set forth by him once more in the diary of 1907.”
Only in September 1909, at Krekshino, in Moscow Province, did he for the first time write a formal will, under the signatures of witnesses:
“The diary of 27 March 1895 was preserved in three copies: one with my late sister, Marya Lvovna (Obolenskaya), one with V. G. Chertkov, and one with me. The copy preserved with me is written in the hand of Prince N. L. Obolensky (my sister’s husband) and was given to me by him on my father’s instructions. I do not know where the original is preserved. Since this will was entrusted, among others, to me as well, I consider myself entitled to publish it. Reprinting it is not forbidden.”
Artistic projects did not cease to occupy L. N.’s soul and mind. In April he records in his diary:
“I was walking beside the Alexander Garden and suddenly, with astonishing clarity and rapture, pictured to myself a novel: how one of us, an educated man, flees with the migrant settlers from his wife and carries off his son with a wet-nurse. He lived a pure working life and there brought him up. And how the son went to the mother who had sent for him, living in all the luxury of a dissolute city life.
I could write it astonishingly well. At least so it seemed.”
That spring L. N. was long in not leaving for Yasnaya. Treating with especial care the health of his wife, who suffered in spirit from the death of the child, he remained with her in Moscow, where S. A. needed the advice of doctors. Besides, the return to Yasnaya Polyana — where everything so reminded her of the light-hearted boy — was hard for her, and she put off this return as far as possible. L. N., taking advantage of his enforced inactivity in Moscow, began to learn to ride a bicycle. Of this he records in his diary:
“During this time I began to learn, in the riding-school, to ride a bicycle. It is very strange why I am drawn to do this. N. tried to dissuade me and was distressed that I ride; but I feel no shame. On the contrary, I feel there is in it a natural holy folly: that it is all the same to me what people think; and besides, it simply gladdens one in a sinless, childlike way.”
The rumour of this new enthusiasm of L. N.’s soon penetrated into the press. Probably V. G. Chertkov made inquiry of L. N. about it, for in one of his letters to him L. N. writes thus:
“The bicycle does not trouble me, despite the reproaches — very useful ones — of Evgeny Ivanovich; first, because I spend no money on it; and second, because when I am carrying water, I am always glad to be seen, whereas when I am seen on the bicycle, I am ashamed.”
Since S. A.’s health inspired serious apprehensions, the question was seriously discussed in the family whether to go abroad with her. To these rumours L. N., in the same letter, answers Chertkov:
“What we shall do, where we shall live — I do not know. I know that for S. it is agonizing to go to Yasnaya, and at one time we were preparing to go to Kislovodsk, at another abroad. Now we have left the question undecided. I, unfortunately, have no opinion; it is all the same to me, even Moscow. Only, when they had decided on the Caucasus, I advised Germany. It is quieter there, and there is benefit for the boys.”
We have already mentioned in the previous chapter that this winter L. N. was visited by a wandering Old Believer from Siberia. Conversations with him often gave L. N. great satisfaction, and here he records in his diary his impressions of one such conversation. This wanderer was called Kuzmich.
Kuzmich was discoursing on salvation:
“If you do not teach people, you will not answer for it; but if you do not teach yourself, for that you will answer.”
“This is terribly powerful. And in my brighter moments I incline to think that the whole matter lies in the manifestation of love within oneself, for which it is needful only to remove the temptations. And remove the temptations, and love will manifest itself; it will demand action — be it the enlightening of the whole world or the taming and softening of a spider. It is all equally important.”
Interesting are the thoughts aroused in L. N. by his own photograph.
“Yesterday I saw my portrait, and it struck me by its age. Little time remains. Father, help me to use it for Thy work.
The dreadful thing is that the older one grows, the more one feels how precious (in the sense of its effect upon the world) is the force of life within one, and how dreadful it is to spend it on something other than that for which it is destined. It is as though life were ever steeping and steeping (and in youth one may splash it about — it is without infusion), and toward the end of life it is dense, all one infusion.
Father, help, help, help.”
And beside it is recorded a thought of great social significance:
“A man is considered disgraced if he has been beaten, if he is convicted of theft, of brawling, of failing to pay a gambling debt, and the like; but what if he has signed a death sentence, taken part in carrying out an execution, read other people’s letters, parted fathers and husbands from their families, taken away the last means of subsistence, thrown people into prison?
And yet this is worse. When will it be otherwise?
Soon. And when it is — that will be the end of the order founded on violence.”
The month of May L. N. still spends in Moscow. Thoughts seethe in his head, and a part of them finds its way into the diary. Many of them have a most important practical significance in the life of people — such as, for example, the thought of how a man ought to bear himself toward the circle of people bound up with him, taking into account his own inner spiritual growth. Here is this thought:
“One cannot, having once entered into certain practical relations with people, suddenly disregard those conditions in the name of a Christian renunciation of life.
(I began to set forth these thoughts, and it did not come off.)
One thing is certain: it often happens that a man enters into worldly relations of life that demand only justice — not to do to another what you would not have done to yourself — and, finding these demands hard, frees himself from them under the pretext (in which he sometimes sincerely believes) that he knows the higher Christian demands and wishes to serve them. He marries, and then, when he has learned the burden of family life, decides that one must ‘leave wife and children and follow Him.’ Or he gathers an artel in order to live by labour on the land, and, having seen the difficulty, throws it up and goes away.
One must not deceive oneself, must not think that one stands higher than the position into which one has come. Were one standing higher, the position too would be higher.
And this does not mean: remain always in the position in which you find yourself; on the contrary, strive constantly to come out of it and to become higher. But become higher not by the denial of obligations, but by freeing yourself from them: first, by fulfilling those that have been taken on, and second, by not entering into new ones.”
How much needless suffering people might avoid, were they to be imbued with the significance of these thoughts.
Interesting is the definition of “holiness” which L. N. gives in the diary of that time.
“One must not confound vanity with the love of glory, and still less with the desire for love, with lovingness.
The first is the desire to distinguish oneself before others, even by trivial, sometimes even bad, deeds; the second is the desire to be extolled for what is useful or good; the third is the desire to be loved.
The first — to dance well; the second — to be reputed among men as good, as clever; the third — to see the expression of people’s love.
The first is bad; the second — better that it were not; the third is lawful.
To yield to none of them, to prize only the estimation of God — this is holiness.”
At the end of May L. N. went off to rest from city life, to the Olsufyevs at Nikolskoye. This trip was not a success. L. N. felt unwell there and therefore could not fully enjoy the rest.
Among other things, there he makes the following interesting entry in his diary:
“Yesterday a newspaper was received with an article about the slanders and stupidities of Mme Séron’s little book. The journalist proposes that I refute them.
But I have asserted nothing about myself, and therefore I have nothing to refute. I am such as I am. And what I am, that I and God know.”
This book is indeed dreadful. It was written by a Frenchwoman, a governess who had lived several years in L. N.’s house. It may be that she did not understand all that she described. This calls forth a certain indulgence toward her book. Among other things, L. N. is accused in it of having, while declaring himself a vegetarian, fetched beef from the sideboard at night, secretly from his wife, and regaled himself on it.
Of course, no better criticism than silence could have been devised for this book.
On 6 June L. N. moves at last to Yasnaya Polyana.
I was at this time working on my own farmstead, in Kostroma Province, and received there the following kind letter from L. N., dated 8 June. May the reader forgive me my immodesty, but I was loath to mar its beautiful wholeness by any abridgement.
“I have missed you very much, dear friend P. Not that I should wish — were it to depend on me — to call you out of your nest and to have you near me; that, on the contrary, I should not wish for you; but I have missed having communion with you, which I have long lacked — your gentle severity and humble independence. Probably this letter will cross with yours; and if not, then write. The latest news of you was from Ivan Ivanovich, that you are well. Does it continue so? We, as you see, are at last at Yasnaya Polyana. Thank God, we went nowhere and live again in the old way. Though life is in the old way only outwardly; I feel that much has changed and, as always, for the better. I speak chiefly of my inner world. I have been ill all this latter time, and feel myself ever nearer and nearer to death, and therefore I often feel myself more alive. Somehow all the phenomena of the world lose more and more their reality — and not in thought, not in consequence of philosophizing, but directly, immediately, they have worn out, like stage scenery, and I see what is behind it. And behind it is the true reality, the same as that which I feel within myself.
There is news in our family: G. is marrying Manya R. The wedding is on 9 July. I am both glad and afraid for them, but most often simply sorry. People who marry thus seem to me people who fall without having stumbled. I myself married thus. Do not marry thus. If you have fallen, then what is to be done. But if you have not stumbled, then why fall on purpose? I have not begun to write anything in earnest, but I ponder and note down much; I should like to work with my hands, but so far I still feel very weak. Convey my greetings to Pavla Nikolaevna and to all who know me. Have you seen the article in Novosti about the wanderers? It is said that this is the most harmful sect, and it is told how they live in the forests of Tomsk. How good it is that we met with Kuzmich.
Farewell for now; I embrace you.”
In the summer of 1895 a mass religious movement began among the Caucasian Doukhobors (dukhobortsy, “spirit-wrestlers”). The first protest against state coercion, the refusal of military service, had already been declared at Easter by the Doukhobor Lebedev and his comrades, who were already serving in their regiment. They were tried and sentenced to torment in a disciplinary battalion. After this, on the advice of their leader, Peter Vasilyevich Verigin, all the Doukhobors who were of one mind with him resolved to destroy all the weapons in their possession (in the Caucasus the entire population is armed) and to break with the government, refusing to perform any obligations whatsoever imposed upon them by the power of the state. The destruction of the weapons — their solemn burning, accompanied by the singing of spiritual psalms — was carried out on the night of 28–29 June 1895 in three localities of the Caucasus where there were Doukhobor settlements. In the last two of these places the burning passed off without incident, but in the Akhalkalaki district, on the denunciation of a hostile faction, this burning of the weapons — for which the Doukhobors had had to bring all their arms together to a designated place — was taken by the administration to be preparation for an armed uprising. Cossacks were summoned, and a savage reprisal was carried out against the unsubmissive Doukhobors, who bore themselves with exceptional dignity; after which all the unsubmissive, about 4,000 persons in number, were driven from their dwellings and resettled among the Georgian mountain villages, while the so-called ringleaders were thrown into prison.
Such a significant manifestation of Christian religious feeling among the Russian common people — half-literate, but gifted with a higher reason — could not, of course, but call forth a warm sympathy in L. N. One may say with confidence that this religious upsurge among the Doukhobors in these years came about not without the influence of L. N.’s writings. Under interrogation by the authorities, one of the leaders of the movement stated outright that over the last several years there had been circulated among the Doukhobors the publications of Posrednik, chiefly of a spiritual and philosophical content, which had strongly affected the moral sense of the Doukhobors.
Be that as it may, news of this movement quickly reached Yasnaya Polyana.
At that time there was living in exile in the Caucasus Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich Khilkov, who of course also contributed to this movement by his personal influence.
It was from him that L. N. received the first news of the burning of the weapons by the Doukhobors and of the cruel reprisal inflicted upon them by the Caucasian authorities. Unfortunately, Khilkov’s account had been drawn at third hand and suffered from inaccuracies. Here is what L. N. wrote to him in reply:
“I have received your letter with the description of the violence against the Doukhobors, and I do not know what to do. I do not know what to do because I cannot carry out what you wish. To send an article to the Russian newspapers is impossible. Not one of them will print your account in the form in which you have sent it to me. (In the Birzhevye Vedomosti, No. 201, of 24 July, there was printed a fairly detailed item about the beginning of the discord among the Doukhobors, and how Verigin was exiled, and how the rank-and-file soldiers refused to serve, and about how they are now being resettled into the highland places of the Dusheti, Tionety and Signakh districts.) To send your account to the foreign newspapers I likewise consider superfluous, chiefly because this account is written very badly — and badly not because it lacks literary merit; on the contrary — it lacks simplicity, precision, definiteness and truthfulness, and the whole tone of the account is somehow ironic, jocular, a tone in which one cannot speak of such terrible matters. There is no need to write about the Christ-loving warriors of the White Tsar; what is needed is to explain how four men were killed, who these people were, their ages, their names, how they died. Why, when four men had been killed, did the commander become convinced of the futility of the attack? All this, and much else about the rape and outrage, is so poorly told, so unclear, so exaggerated, that it inspires complete distrust of the whole. In such a form the article will either not be printed at all, or, if it is printed in some little newspaper, it will produce no impression whatever. I entirely agree with you that this ought to be printed in foreign publications; in the Russian ones there is nothing even to think about; and if they do print it, it will be with such cuts that it will pass unnoticed. But in order for the article to have an effect on those upon whom it ought to have an effect, it must be written strictly truthfully, circumstantially, exactly. And therefore, if such information can be gathered, then gather it and send it. Your account, at the risk of doing something unpleasant to you, I shall keep with me for the present. If you instruct me to send it as it is, I shall send it. The one thing I shall do now is this: in accordance with your plan I shall write to our friend Kenworthy in England, and to another as well, telling them that a cruel persecution is being carried out against the Doukhobors, and that, if they wish to learn the details, they should send a correspondent, directing him to you, so that you may direct him onward to where he is needed. Tomorrow I shall consult with Chertkov about this and write. Today my daughter Tanya returned from your mother’s. She saw your children and told them that you have by force been deprived of the possibility of being with them, and that you love them and grieve for them. Let her write to you herself. Farewell for now. Do not be angry with me, and love me as I love you.”
At this time I happened to be at Yasnaya Polyana. The news of the Doukhobors struck me deeply, and I offered Lev Nikolaevich my services to travel to the Caucasus and find out what the matter was. L. N. approved my plan, and at the beginning of August I set off there, called on Khilkov in Nukha, and on his directions sought out the exiled Doukhobors, questioned in person those who had taken part in the burning of the weapons, in the clashes with the Cossacks, and in other protests, and brought back to L. N. a detailed description of all that I had seen and heard.
L. N., having read my account and approved it in principle, undertook to edit it. Having done so, he wrote a brief preface to it, in the nature of a recommendation and an attestation of the truthfulness of the description, and besides this he wrote, in the form of an afterword, a special article, with the epigraph: “In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” In this article he stresses the world-historical significance of the movement among the Doukhobors, which had expressed itself in the refusal to perform state obligations.
My own article I entitled “The Persecution of Christians in Russia in 1895.” By this title I wished to underscore the coarse, cruel attitude of the Russian authorities toward pure religious manifestations, and also the circumstance that true Christianity is subject to persecution by this world both in the first centuries of our era and in the nineteenth century, notwithstanding the enormous distance mankind has travelled along the road of cultural development. All these articles, at L. N.’s suggestion, were printed in the Times in London, and were of course at once read in Russia in the highest spheres. Persons of great competence told me that these articles produced a stunning effect upon the “spheres,” especially upon Pobedonostsev, who, having read them, at once went to the Sovereign with a special report. The investigation I had carried out had remained entirely hidden from the local authorities, and they, having dispatched the “rebelling” Doukhobors into exile and lodged them in prisons, had set their minds at rest in the conviction that the temporary disturbance had been suppressed. And it was in this spirit that the report to the higher authorities had been drawn up. But from the articles printed in the Times they saw that the affair was only just beginning, that the fire was gradually flaring up, and that at the head of this movement now stood not some half-literate peasant, but Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, who had carried this struggle onto the world stage.
Although surveillance was set over me, I personally escaped unharmed at that time, because L. N., taking pity on me and without telling me, printed my article without my signature, so that it appeared anonymously, and there were not sufficient grounds to prosecute me.
A new investigation was ordered by the government, which of course uncovered fresh crimes on the part of the local authorities. From this time on there were established direct and frequent communications, both ours and L. N.’s, with the Doukhobors — both the exiled and the imprisoned — to whom we endeavoured to render all-round assistance.
Of L. N.’s further participation in the Doukhobor movement we shall tell in the following chapters, in describing the events that subsequently took place.
The middle of the 1890s of the last century was a time of the rapid spread of L. N.’s ideas and of the rise in various countries of centres of this propaganda. Such were: the circle of Eugen Schmitt in Budapest, the circle of Škarvan and Makovický among the Slovaks in Austria-Hungary, Kenworthy’s “Brotherhood Church” near London; similar circles were being founded in Holland, in Germany, in America, and of course in many places in Russia.
That same autumn L. N. made the acquaintance of A. P. Chekhov. In a letter to his son Lev Lvovich of 9 September of that year he says, among other things:
“Chekhov was with us and pleased me very much. He is very gifted, and his heart must be excellent, but as yet he has no definite point of view of his own.”
In a letter to V. G. Chertkov of 10 October L. N. writes, among other things:
“This while I have been occupied with letters.”
Indeed, during this autumn L. N. wrote several long letters which have, in our opinion, a great universal human significance, and therefore we shall try to give here, if only briefly, some notion of them.
One of these long letters was the so-called “Letter to a Pole.”
Professor Marian Edmundovich Zdziechowski, having read L. N.’s article “Christianity and Patriotism,” wrote L. N. a letter in which, while agreeing with L. N. in his condemnation of militant patriotism, he defended the patriotism of oppressed peoples — among them the Polish — that patriotism which serves them as the sole instrument for the preservation of their national distinctiveness. Together with this, Zdziechowski sent L. N. his article on the Polish religious movement, at the head of which had stood Mickiewicz and Towiański. This article was of great interest to L. N.; but to his defence of patriotism L. N. answered him with a long letter, in which he gives a new and still clearer definition of the patriotism both of a dominant and of an oppressed people:
“By the word patriotism is understood, after all, not only the direct, involuntary love of one’s own people and the preference of it before others, but also the doctrine that such love and preference are good and useful. And this doctrine is especially unreasonable among Christian peoples.
It is unreasonable not only because it contradicts the very fundamental sense of Christ’s teaching, but also because Christianity, attaining by its own path all that to which patriotism aspires, makes patriotism superfluous, needless, and obstructive — like a lamp in the light of day.
The Christian ideal includes within itself love of one’s own people. If one must love all, then of course one’s own, those near to one, as well.
On the contrary, patriotism — that is, an exclusive love of one’s own people — excludes the Christian law of love toward one’s enemy. And therefore in its name great cruelties are committed.
Were there no doctrine that patriotism is something good, there would never be found men so vile as to resolve, at the end of the nineteenth century, to do the abominations which they now do.
But now the learned — with us the most savage persecutor of the faith is a former professor — have a point of support in patriotism. They know history, they know all the useless horrors of persecutions of language and of faith, but thanks to the doctrine of patriotism they have a justification.
Patriotism gives them a point of support, while Christianity takes it out from under their feet. And therefore subjugated peoples, suffering from oppression, must destroy patriotism, must demolish its theoretical foundations, and not extol it.”
Further on, L. N. says:
“We must care not about patriotism, but about this — that, bringing into life the light that is in us, we change it and bring it nearer to the ideal that stands before us…
But the recognition of patriotism, of whatever kind, as a good quality, and the rousing of the people to it, is one of the chief obstacles to the attainment of the ideals that stand before us.”
Having published his article “On the Ideals of the Polish People” as a separate pamphlet, Zdziechowski, with L. N.’s permission, placed his letter in it by way of a preface.
I personally had occasion several times to hear from L. N. the expression of his sympathies toward the Polish people. In this kindly feeling of his, as he himself said, there was a measure of repentance — a desire to make amends for those bad feelings which, under the influence of a patriotic upbringing, had been instilled in him from childhood, which he had harboured in his youth, and which had hindered him from seeing in its true light the struggle of the Polish people for their independence. One may suppose that the tale of Polish life Why?, written by him later, was an expression of these new, sincere, and conscious feelings.
A large correspondence began at this time between L. N. and the well-known publicist Mikhail Osipovich Menshikov, who was then expressing in his talented articles views very close to those of Lev Nikolaevich.
In his very interesting articles occasioned by L. N.’s story Master and Man, and in his private letters that followed, there came to light his first disagreement with L. N.
The difference in their views lay chiefly in their attitude to the role of reason, which for L. N. was the chief motive force on man’s path toward his own perfecting. Menshikov, while not denying the significance of reason in the matter of man’s striving toward good, attached the chief significance to the “practice of good” — to upbringing, to habit. L. N. pointed out to him that this comes about, probably, from his confounding two concepts — reason (razum) and intellect (um). For L. N., good must be conscious and reasonable. And he defines good by such negative assertions:
“The good-naturedness of the dove is not a virtue. And the dove is no more virtuous than the wolf, and the meek Slav no more virtuous than the vengeful Circassian. Virtue and its degrees begin only when reasonable activity begins.”
To this letter Menshikov replied that he did not know what reason is, and L. N., in the next letter to Menshikov, tries to make clear to him his error and gives a new definition of reason.
“Reason is an instrument given to man for the fulfilment of his destiny, or the law of life; and since the law of life is one for all men, reason too is one for all, though it manifests itself in different degrees in different men. The whole movement of life — what is called progress — is the ever greater and greater uniting of men in a definition, made clear by reason, of the aim, the purpose, of life, and of the means of fulfilling that purpose. Reason is the power given to man for the indication of the direction of life.
In our time the aim of life, indicated by reason, consists in the union of men and of beings; while the means for the attainment of this aim, indicated by reason, consist in the destruction of the superstitions, errors, and temptations that hinder the manifestation in men of the fundamental property of their life — love. This is what reason is, as I have, more or less clearly, tried to express it in all my writings of the last ten years.”
After these letters there followed a certain drawing-together between L. N. and M. O. Menshikov, and L. N. read his fine articles with joy. The final break between them came much later, already in the first years of the twentieth century.
In the highest degree interesting are the letters with which L. N. addressed his youngest son this autumn, wishing to guard him from his youthful temptations. The intimate character of these letters does not permit large extracts to be made from them; we shall confine ourselves only to their most general part. In the second long letter to his youngest son, L. N. gives a new brief summary of the Christian teaching, as he understands it and as he would wish his son and his son’s young contemporaries to understand it. Here is what he writes to him:
“The essence of the Christian teaching consists in this: that it discloses to man his true good, which lies in the fulfilment of his destiny, and points out all that, under the guise of joy and pleasure, may violate this good. These imaginary joys and pleasures the Christian teaching calls snares — temptations…
The chief and fundamental temptation against which the teaching of Christ warns consists in believing that happiness lies in the satisfaction of the lusts of one’s own personality. The personality, the animal personality, will always seek the satisfaction of its lusts; but the temptation consists in believing that this satisfaction will bring good. And therefore there is an immense difference between, on the one hand, feeling the urge to a lust and believing that its satisfaction will bring good, and therefore strengthening the lust; and, on the other hand, knowing that this satisfaction will remove one from the true good, and therefore weakening the urge by every means.
This temptation, if only a man give play to his reason, is clearly visible to him: for, besides the fact that the satisfaction of every lust is accomplished to the detriment of other people and therefore with struggle, every satisfaction of a lust draws after it the need of a new lust, harder to satisfy, and so on to the end. And therefore, in order that reason should not disclose the vanity of this temptation, there is joined to it another, the most terrible of all, consisting in weakening one’s reason, in stupefying it: tobacco, wine, music.
Upon these two chief temptations rest all the petty temptations which catch people and, depriving them of the true good, torment them…
Such is the teaching which I profess and preach, and which to you and to many seems something fantastic, hazy, strange, and inapplicable. This teaching consists wholly only in this: not to do stupid things, and not, vainly and without any benefit to oneself or to others, to ruin within oneself that divine power which is implanted in you, and not to deprive oneself of that happiness which is destined for us all. The teaching consists wholly in believing one’s reason, in keeping it in all its purity, in developing it, and, in acting thus, in receiving the true good of the eternal, true life, and, over and above that, in a far greater degree, those very joys which now attract you.”
No less interesting is L. N.’s correspondence with his new circle of like-minded people in Holland. One of the members of this circle turned to L. N. with the question of what he should do about a young man who had come to him for advice — whether to perform an important Christian act, or to renounce this thought out of pity for his mother. L. N. answered him that, of course, a man who asks such questions is still far from being able consciously to accomplish a Christian feat, which is prompted by an irresistible feeling of inevitability; and then L. N. expresses the following thought, already many times expressed in his writings, but here uttered with especial vividness:
“This is why I find it useless, and often even harmful, to preach particular acts, or abstention from acts, such as the refusal of military service and the like. It is needful that all actions should proceed not from the desire to follow certain rules, but from the complete impossibility of acting otherwise. And therefore, when I find myself in the position in which you found yourself before this young man, I always advise doing all that is required of them — to enter the service, to serve, to take the oath, and so on — if only this is morally possible for them; to abstain from nothing until it becomes as morally impossible as it is impossible for a man to lift a mountain or to rise into the air. I always say to them: if you wish to refuse military service and to bear all the consequences of that refusal, strive to reach that degree of assurance and clarity that it should become as impossible for you to take the oath and to perform the manual of arms as it is impossible for you to strangle a child or to do something of the kind. But if this is possible for you, then do it; for it is better that there should be one soldier the more than one hypocrite the more, or one apostate from the teaching — which is what happens to those who undertake deeds beyond their strength. This is why I am convinced that Christian truth cannot be spread by the preaching of certain outward acts, as is done in the false-Christian religions, but only by the destruction and dethronement of temptations, and especially by the conviction that the one true good of man lies in the fulfilment of the will of God, in whom are the law and the destiny of man.”
Finally, let us mention my letter to the Doukhobor leader Peter Vasilyevich Verigin, who was at that time in exile in Obdorsk and was corresponding with L. N.’s friends.
L. N.’s letter, written to P. V. Verigin in November 1895, was a reply to the thoughts Verigin had expressed in his letter to I. M. Tregubov — thoughts to the effect that the book, and the printed word in general, are unnecessary. “But that which is needful and lawful must without fail be in every man, and is received directly from on high or from oneself.” In this denial of the “printed book” there appeared one of the fundamental tenets of the Doukhobor teaching. The Doukhobors, as is well known, have no Holy Scripture; its place is taken by the “Living Book” (Zhivotnaya kniga), consisting of psalms learned by heart and handed down orally, in which their religious and moral teaching is set forth.
It is remarkable that in his reply to Verigin, L. N. — that “denier of science, art and civilization” known to all the world — proves to Verigin that the printed word is necessary and useful for the spiritual development of man and for the union of many people in one common truth. Agreeing with Verigin as to the many advantages of personal, oral communication, L. N. says:
“But on the other hand the advantages of print are also very great, and consist chiefly in this: that the circle of listeners is widened a hundred, a thousand times over against the listeners of oral speech. And this widening of the circle of readers is important not because they become many, but because, among the millions of people of diverse nations and conditions to whom a book is accessible, those who think alike select themselves of their own accord; and thanks to the book, though they may be tens of thousands of versts apart from one another and have never met, they are joined into one and live by a single soul, and receive spiritual joy and the cheering consciousness that they are not alone. Such communion I now have with you and with other people of other nations, who have never seen me, but who are nearer to me than my own sons and brothers by blood.”
This letter is interesting in that it most vividly refutes the absurd condemnations of L. N. for narrowness and sectarianism, and gives a clear conception of the breadth of his views and of his tolerance toward the views of another — even of one close to him in spirit, but who upholds his own particular opinion.
As we have already mentioned above, in this year there appeared the book compiled by E. I. Popov, “The Life and Death of Drozhzhin,” which came out at once abroad in Russian and German with an afterword by L. N. This book moved the well-known German novelist Friedrich Spielhagen to write and publish an open letter to L. N., in which he argues that Drozhzhin’s death had not been of use to the cause of universal peace, that it had been a useless cruelty, and that the responsibility for it falls upon L. N.
The plain failure to understand the spiritual process that had led Drozhzhin to the accomplishment of his act left, of course, no possibility of replying to it. This letter is interesting only in that it expresses the public opinion of that time of the large German Social-Democratic group to which the late German writer belonged — the author of the well-known political novel Im Reih und Glied, which to this day remains an expression of German mass morality, or rather of that servility to which personal initiative — the very thing that L. N. held to be the foundation of human progress — was always a thing of dread.
Notwithstanding these particular objections, L. N.’s views, spreading throughout the world, brought him into communion with persons of the most varied kind. At the end of 1895 there came to Moscow L. N.’s English like-minded friend John Kenworthy, with whom L. N. had long been in close communion through letters and books. Their meeting was, of course, joyful; their union grew still stronger; and, having returned to England, Kenworthy became a centre of the spiritual communion called forth by L. N.’s views.